Hello Sicily

I have been writing these blogs as the days go by (even though i could not post them until now)

Well my first day in Italy is finally here. The flight went well. I slept almost the entire time…surprise surprise. Even though I have traveled to Europe before, this was the first time where the primary language was not English. Everything was written, spoken, and done in the Italian fashion, english coming in second. I felt like I was already in Italy, as soon as I stepped on the flight. I woke up just in time to watch the bright orange sun rise on the horizon as we descended into the beautiful island of Sicilia. Bellisima! Nora and her sister and brother in law generously picked me up from the airport which is about a half hour from the actual city of Palermo. She was so kind to do this because I just found out that yesterday was a national holiday, "Ferragosto" (from what I understand, everyone goes on vacation and it is celebrated in the similiar fashion that we celebrate 4th of July ), and they had spent the previous day at the beach and had came into Palermo to stay the night just to pick me up. I appreciated this so much. We headed to her cousins beautiful house that overlooks the city, where we had espresso and biscotti on the patio. We all then headed to Nora’s home town, Canicatii to have lunch with the rest of her family. On the ride there I found myself in the back seat between two Sicilian women, who were of course having a normal, yet animated conversation basically right through me. There were loud words, hands flying, and fingers pointing across my face. Meanwhile, I notice that the lines in the road that separate the lanes must only be used as guidelines here because we spent most of our time driving in the middle of the road, not sticking to either lane. There are no rules of the road here. Everyone does as they please without much regard for anyone else. On the way we stopped to buy "pane" (bread) out of the back of a car parked on the side of the road. It might have been the best bread I have ever had (and I have had alot)!

When we got to Canacatti we went to Nora’s gorgeous villa right outside of town. In Italy, almost everyone has an apartment like home in town and then a larger villa with a garden about 5 min outside of town, where they stay during the summer. All of her family is basically next door to each other so they all spend a lot of time together. We picked figs from a tree in her backyard and took them to her brother’s house where we had lunch with Nora’s family and the priest that married Marcello and Bianca :O). There was LOTS of food and even more wine, followed by a bottle of grappa, espresso, gelato…ect. It seemed never ending and was awesome!! Then Before laying down for my afternoon siesta, we went to the local mall to get an Italian sim card for my cell phone so that I would not be charged the ridiculous roaming rates. It's far from the malls that I am used to...but it did the job!

When I woke up from my siesta, it was almost dark outside and I realized the power had gone out. It had gotten dark by the time we walked back to her brother’s so we headed down the narrow road with our flashlight guiding us as the cars zoomed by. We sat outside by the candlelight and relaxed before dinner which was pizza from the local pizzeria. I thought the pizza in NYC was good. This place kicks NYC’s ass!

To top it off, on the walk home I saw a shooting star. The sky at night here is absolutely ridiculous. You can see every star in the sky clearly. It looks like God just placed them there perfectly. To say the least, today was an enchanting day.